“It’s—it’s sure something.”
Beyond that, words failed me, as the same old situation sank in, no school wardrobe, no mad money, no hope of prying either one out of the clotheshorse preening over her creation. Or was there?
Sweeping the creation over her shoulders to try to get a look at herself from behind in the full-length mirror, she asked, as if my opinion actually counted for something: “What do you think, dearie? Does it look all right from behind?”
The muumuu made her rear end look like the butt of a hippo, but I kept myself to “It’s, ah, about like the front. Fits where it touches. Like Gram would say.”
“Oh, you. But you’re right, it is supposed to fit loosely.” Humming full-force as she twirled this way and that in front of the mirror that was barely big enough to accommodate her and the tent of fabric both, she was in her own world. Not for long, if I had anything to do with it.
“Gee, yeah, the moo dress will look awful nice on you,” I fibbed wholeheartedly. “And you know what, I sure wish I had any good clothes to go along with it at the card party.” I furthered the cause of a spiffy homemade wardrobe by angling my head at the sewing machine. “I wouldn’t want to look like something the cat dragged in, when you’re so dressed up,” I clucked as if we couldn’t stand that.
That took the twirls out of her in a hurry. She frowned at the reflection of the two of us in the mirror, seeing my point. My hopes shot up as she chewed on the matter, studying back and forth from the crazily colored muumuu to me dressed dull as dishwater as usual. I cast another longing look around at the waiting sewing machine and stacks of enough material to outfit me twenty times over, but she was not going to be outfoxed that easily.
“I just remembered, sweetums,” she exclaimed as if reminding me, too. “You have your wonderful rodeo shirt to wear, don’t you.” She smiled victoriously. “We’ll put on a fashion show for the girls, mmm?”
? ? ?
WITH HEN PARTY day looming beyond and me not one stitch better off than I’d been, Saturday arrived, with the soap opera characters taking the day off to recuperate from their harrowing week—I could sympathize with them—and I was leery that Aunt Kate might have second thoughts about any canasta futzing and sit me down for one last drill all forenoon. Instead she let me know in no uncertain terms that she had things to do to get herself ready for the party and I needed to find some way to occupy myself. “You can do that if you put your mind to it a weensy bit, I’m sure.”
I was puzzled. “Can’t I be in the greenhouse with Herman like always?”
“Hmpf,” she went, pretty much her version of his Puh. “Him? Didn’t the old poot tell you? He won’t be here.”
Just then Herman appeared from the direction of their bedroom, surprisingly dressed up, at least to the extent of wearing a blue-green tie with mermaids twined coyly in seaweed floating all over it. “She is right, can you imagine. Time to go take my medicine.” He stuck a few small bills she must have doled out to him into his wallet, saying, “It is not much, Your Highness.”
She answered that with a dirty look and “It’s the usual, it will have to do—there’s no such thing as a raise when there’s no income, is there.”
He shrugged that off, but juggling the car keys, he halted across the kitchen table from her. “Donny can come with, why not?”
Aunt Kate snorted and barely glanced up from the scandals of the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter. “Brinker, he is only eleven years old, that’s why not.”
“Old enough. We both knowed what was what in life by then, yah?” Not waiting for whatever she had to say to that, probably plenty, he turned to me with a wink of his glass eye. “Up to Donny, it should be. What do you say, podner?”
A trip along to a doctor’s office did not sound any too good. On the other hand, it might help the case of cabin fever I was coming down with from my shacky attic room and the allures of Bali and other boundless places shown in the National Geographics.
“Sure, I guess so,” I said, as if I didn’t care one way or the other, hoping that would keep me on the straight and level with Aunt Kate. According to the parting snort she gave as Herman and I headed out to the DeSoto, it didn’t.